If you think this is about John Wilkes Booth...think again. It's about the plot to kill Lincoln before he was inaugurated. It is a fine work by the authors--readable, factual and a good, easy popular read. The authors show a definite prejudice for slavery and the causes of the Civil War. In the "Afterward", authors liken it to 2020--reader cannot help but draw the political parallels to our election in 2020. I don't believe that the author stated that the plotters were ever brought to justice; rather, they existed and acted in the Civil War and later without consequence. ( )

Meltzer and Mensch have put together a detailed account of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination attempt, but it isn’t the one we know about. It’s an attempt that was thwarted largely by the founder of Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, Allan Pinkerton in 1861 before Lincoln had been sworn in as our sixteenth president. The book’s style is conversational and accessible, and, in parts, hard to put down. It will appeal to readers who aren’t necessarily drawn to history. It’s a great story, with or without its historical significance. And lastly, “The Lincoln Conspiracy” does a great job of filling in some of the blanks left in history’s portrayal of the great sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. We see Lincoln as a sensitive human being and not necessarily just as the awkward, self-taught small town lawyer from Illinois we’ve come to know in our school history books. I appreciated this part of the book as much as the mystery. I enjoyed this book a lot and think most readers will. ( )

Very good book. This is an enlightening book about a subject that has not been well reported. Great read. Plenty of new info about the election of Lincoln and the state of America in that period. ( )

My mom is a huge Lincoln fan and gave me this new book to read. It also has a connection to my hometown of Dundee, IL in that one of the main focuses is Allan Pinkerton, credited with being one of the first private detectives in America.

Basically, the plot revolves around a conspiracy hatched in pro-slavery Baltimore to assassinate the newly-elected Lincoln on his way to his Inauguration. This is what i would describe as "history lite". It reads fast and is engaging, has some research behind it but isn't going to be anything new to most history buffs. Annoyingly, large chunks are written in the present tense, i.e. "A man in his late forties sits at a desk in western New York". Ugh.

I also spent way too much time trying to figure out how and and why these two men wrote this book together. It seems that they are both authors in their own right, so why collaborate? And apparently this is their second book together. They don't reveal their process in the afterward. Did they trade off chapters? Did one mainly research? Is it a ghost writer situation? I wish I knew. That seemed a more interesting mystery than the actual conspiracy theory . . .

Original publication date: 2020
Author’s nationality: American
Original language: English
Length: 368 pages
Rating: 2.5 stars
Format/where I acquired the book: borrowed from mom
Why I read this: mom told me too :-) ( )